The Marvels’ Mid-Credits Scene Will Leave You Feeling Blue

What’s behind that “X” logo seen in the trailer? (You know the answer.) Photo: Marvel Studios

The Marvels’ release week kicked off with a new trailer full of fascinating choices — among them, spotlighting characters like Iron Man and Captain America (who aren’t in the film) and including a glimpse of a very familiar logo, which, it turns out, appears only in the movie’s mid-credits stinger — the first time footage from one of these scenes has shown up in early marketing. The scene itself, meanwhile, gestures awkwardly toward the expanding future of the Marvel cinematic universe.

The movie’s climax sees a still-code-name-less Monica Rambeau (Teyonah Parris) using her light-based powers to stitch up a hole in space-time while trapping herself on the other side, in what she describes as “another reality.” Every other Marvel movie and TV show post-Endgame has featured the multiverse in some way, and The Marvels is no different, as the scene midway through the closing credits confirms.

For the second time in the series, Monica wakes up disoriented in a hospital room — only this time, rather than reappearing after being Thanos-snapped to find that her mother Maria (Lashana Lynch) died in her absence, she finds her asleep on a chair next to her, alive and well. Monica is confused and distraught, and since the audience is ahead of her on multiversal matters, the scene feels immediately tragic. Maria awakens to Monica’s desperate sobs of “Mom?” and responds with confusion of her own.

The scene promises some kind of intense drama on the horizon, exploring the rift between a regretful daughter who never got to say good-bye and a mother who doesn’t seem to know who her daughter is. But right in the middle of this emotional moment waltzes Marvel’s new favorite crutch: a cameo from one of the characters Disney acquired when it purchased 20th Century Fox.

Great. Cool. Thanks.

The X-Men’s signature “X” logo becomes visible on Monica’s patient monitor, as her emotionally charged exchange with Maria cuts away to the furry blue scientist Beast/Hank McCoy, as played by Kelsey Grammer in heavy makeup and prosthetics in 2006’s X-Men: The Last Stand. But this time, it isn’t really Kelsey Grammer. It’s the actor’s voice emanating from a half-rendered, barely emoting CGI monstrosity that floats into place, having seemingly been added to the movie earlier that day. The Marvels features Andrew Lloyd Webber’s “Memory” on the soundtrack, but this ends up its most overt reminder of Cats.

Like a shrink explaining Norman Bates’s motives, Hank gives Monica and the audience a rundown of where she ended up, referring to it as a “reality parallel to your own.” It’s clearly not the Earth-838 universe, as seen in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, for two specific reasons. One, Hank makes a reference to “Charles,” presumably X-Men leader Charles Xavier/Professor X, whose 838 counterpart had his neck telepathically snapped by Wanda Maximoff. And two, Maria Rambeau is that universe’s Captain Marvel (and also probably dead; she was crushed by a giant statue of Xena). Here, Hank refers to Maria as “Binary,” one of the other code names Carol Danvers used in the comics when she was part of the X-Men.

When Maria stands up, she walks over to an X-shaped door and reveals a white-and-maroon costume similar to Carol’s Binary outfit. It’s sort of cool if you know your Captain Marvel lore, but it’s also hard to shake the feeling that all this world-building by way of comic and movie Easter eggs has gotten in the way of something potentially interesting, even if Monica’s story is meant to continue somewhere down the line.

The X-Men will probably keep trickling into the MCU one cameo at a time, in ways that hopefully don’t serve as reminders of what Marvel is currently doing wrong, valuing IP recognition over actual storytelling. Grammer was perfectly cast as Hank back in the day — who better to bring an erudite air to an animalistic hero than Dr. Frasier Crane? — and seeing him play the part again would certainly be welcome under the right circumstances. But interrupting some of the only meaningful drama Marvel has put onscreen all year? Showing up looking like Benicio del Toro mid-transformation in the 2010 remake of The Wolfman? Not what we had in mind.

Correction: An earlier version of this article stated that every Marvel movie and TV show post-Endgame has featured the multiverse in some way, when in fact it’s been every other project, or roughly half.